Tombo, a Japanese restaurant that specializes in handmade udon Masare Savito makes sushi..Photo By Kurt Rogers

Tombo, a Japanese restaurant that specializes in handmade udon Masare Savito makes sushi..Photo By Kurt Rogers

Photo: Kurt Rogers

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Tombo, a Japanese restaurant that specializes in handmade udon .Photo By kurt Rogers

Tombo, a Japanese restaurant that specializes in handmade udon .Photo By kurt Rogers

Photo: Kurt Rogers

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Handmade noodles make all the difference at Tombo

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There's not much in the way of decor at Tombo, a Japanese noodle house in downtown San Mateo. But the handwritten signs on the wall, one in Japanese, the other in English, tell you why you've come:

"Our handmade noodles are very digestible. Our noodle soup is famous for having less salt and is better for your health."

Tombo's owner, Masaru Saito, has been hand-making udon noodles since he opened the first Tombo restaurant in 1988 in Osaka, Japan. Udon, made from flour, water, salt and "something secret," said Saito, are fat noodles, about 12 inches long, a quarter-inch wide and about an eighth-inch thick.

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A former businessman, Saito learned how to make udon during a one-year stint in a noodle house in Osaka. In 1998, Saito brought his skills to the Bay Area and opened a Tombo in San Jose. He closed that location 18 months ago and attempted to retire in Hawaii, but he found the cost of living too high and returned to the mainland.

Saito and his wife, Keiko, who cooks alongside her husband, spent 10 months looking for a new location for Tombo, which means "dragonfly" and is named after a popular Japanese song. The Saitos found a quiet location in San Mateo, on Second Avenue between Ellsworth and B Street.

Wendy Tokunaga of Half Moon Bay discovered Tombo's new location while watching Saito's 15-second commercial on KTSF Channel 26, the local Japanese station. Saito ran the commercial once a week for four weeks when he opened in June.

Having enjoyed Tombo's udon before, Tokunaga felt compelled to announce her food find on www.chowhound.com, a message board devoted to all things gastronomic.

"A lot of restaurants use frozen noodles, and they become mushy when they're cooked," Tokunaga said. "Tombo's udon dishes are perfectly al dente, and the broth is light and tasty in the Kansai (Osaka/Kyoto area) style."

Upon hearing praise of his noodles, Saito said, "It's my original noodle. That's why nobody else can make them. Other restaurants just don't know how to make the noodles. They buy them frozen or dried."

And that makes quite a difference, Saito said.

"It's the taste and the way they go down your throat. It's very smooth. It's better to have some kind of texture, not mushy, but al dente."

To make sure the texture of his udon is just right, Saito sets a timer for 3 minutes, 40 seconds each time he drops a batch into the wok filled with boiling water. While waiting for the noodles to cook, Saito prepares the rest of the dish.

If he is making udon with tempura ($6 lunch; $7 dinner), the restaurant's most popular dish, he breads two butterflied shrimp and tosses them into the fryer. He then works between the fryer and the wok, swirling the noodles from time to time with a pair of long chopsticks.

Saito instinctively knows when the buzzer is about to sound. He twirls one noodle around the chopstick and checks for doneness. When they are al dente, he removes the noodles from the water using a Japanese bamboo net called a zaru. Saito immerses the noodles in cold water to tighten them and make them less sticky. Then he dunks the noodles back into the boiling water to warm them before adding them to a bowl.

To finish the dish, Saito pours a broth made with dried bonito fish flakes, water, soy sauce, salt and sugar over the noodles. He then places the two pieces of shrimp tempura on top of the noodles and garnishes the dish with chopped green onions and a fish cake.

The server then promptly delivers the steaming dish to the waiting customer.

"It's the best way to eat and enjoy," Saito said.

And, according to Japanese custom, "You're allowed to slurp the noodles to show you're enjoying them," said Saki Murakami, a server at Tombo, who admitted, "I didn't know that until I came here."

Most of Tombo's customers are Japanese. Saito wishes for a higher percentage of diners from other ethnicities, like he has seen in San Francisco's Japantown, but he said that trend hasn't made it to San Mateo.

Americans also view the dish as a soup course, whereas Japanese consider udon the main course. Saito has noticed that Americans eat all of the broth and leave some noodles when they're finished. His Japanese customers eat all of the noodles and leave some broth.

Though Saito wants to keep his noodle recipe a secret, he did share a few techniques. After mixing the dough, Saito refrigerates it overnight. The chilling makes the dough hard, giving the noodles a firm texture when they are cooked. The next day, Saito rolls out the dough and uses a cutter, similar to a pasta machine, to cut the dough.

"We make the noodles a little thinner than in Japan so they boil faster to serve them quicker," Saito said.

Tombo also serves a variety of other Japanese dishes, including udon yosenabe ($8.50 lunch; $9.50 dinner), a big bowl of vegetables, shrimp, crab, broth and noodles that sits on top of a gas stove. Keiko Saito explained, "You eat it while it cooks."

And a favorite among chowhounds is Tombo's Drinker's Menu, a collection of tsumami (snacks) that go with sake or beer. Murakami said she frequently serves edamame (soy beans), gyoza (pot stickers), sashimi and takoyaki (octopus balls).